30. The Awful Truth

A few years back, when memes were passed around the film blogosphere like a flu virus, I was invited to name my ten favorite film characters of all time. Right at the very top of my list, I placed Lucy and Jerry Warriner, the sparring, on-and-off spouses played by Irene Dunne and Cary Grant in Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth. In retrospect, that was a telling choice.

With the possible exception of the Thin Man movies, I can’t think of another screwball comedy whose principal characters are so much fun to watch regardless of what they’re doing or what’s happening around them. Screwball comedies aren’t typically character-driven; their motors run on intricately structured plotting and razor sharp, rat-a-tat dialogue. The Awful Truth, by contrast, belongs wholly to the screwball genre, and yet stands apart from it in significant ways, and its character focus is the least of it. Its loose, free-wheeling style is a result of its being made without a completed working script; bits of comic business were improvised and McCarey notoriously wrote much of the dialogue while on the set. Thus the film is a bit short on plot, but very long on brilliantly funny, sketch-like scenes that could each, more or less, stand on their own. You could dive into the film at say, the beginning of the nightclub scene where the estranged Warriners and their ill-chosen new partners end up at the same, uncomfortable table, and still follow and laugh at the proceedings.

The story, such as it is, is this simple:

We open with Jerry Warriner at his club, getting a sunlamp-induced tan so he’ll convincingly look as if he’s been in Florida for the last two weeks before returning home to his wife, Lucy. (Where he’s really been and what he’s been doing are never specified.) When he does return home, along with a coterie of friends he’s invited for cocktails, Lucy is nowhere to be found. Eventually, she arrives – still in last night’s evening dress, trailing her handsome-but-clueless voice teacher (Alexander D’Arcy) behind and brightly spinning a story about the car breaking down. Jerry’s ruse about the Florida trip is exposed when Lucy spots the “Grown in California” stamp on the “Florida oranges” he’s brought her as a gift. With their trust in each other shattered, the couple makes a seemingly half-hearted decision to divorce. Forced to cross paths repeatedly afterwards (mainly due to a shared custody agreement over their dog, Mr. Smith), they spend the rest of the film scheming to break up each other’s rebound romances until they are finally reunited for good. In the meantime, Lucy is briefly engaged to Oklahoma oilman, Daniel – an exuberantly innocent rube played with comic gusto by Ralph Bellamy – while Jerry first dates a nightclub singer named Dixiebelle (Joyce Compton), then a “madcap heiress” (so-called anyway; Molly Lamont seems mostly grim and humorless in her brief scenes.)

Re-watching The Awful Truth is always a tremendous pleasure for me, not so much because I get invested in the suspense of whether the Warriners end up together (I take that for granted), but just for the fun of watching them tease each other and get under each other’s skin. Like most screwball characters, they’re wealthy, witty and elegant, and move through a certain elevated stratum of society with ease. Unlike the typical screwball denizen, however, neither is particularly madcap nor given to eccentric behavior. If anything, the Warriners are models of middlebrow propriety and emotional reserve, only letting down their guard and allowing themselves to look foolish when their attempts to win each other back become desperate. This point is brilliantly and exhaustively elucidated by James Harvey in his scholarly tome “Romantic Comedy in Hollywood,” where he notes “they concern themselves with appearances finally so that they can defy and rise above them. They immolate themselves like other great lovers – but for laughs.”

The aforementioned nightclub scene is a case in point. Jerry’s date, Dixiebelle, takes the stage to sing “Gone with the Wind,” accompanied by wind effects that blow her dress up over her silken panties whenever she sings the title phrase. The icy mortification at the table where Jerry, Lucy and Daniel watch this display with escalating levels of unspoken horror and discomfort is a little masterpiece of comic nuance, although – significantly – no one laughs or makes a rude remark. Later, after bragging of the “cups” he’s won for his ballroom dancing skills back home, Daniel gets Lucy on to the dance floor for a wildly enthusiastic, floor-stomping performance that brings the nightclub to a standstill. Dunne plays Lucy’s’ acute embarrassment at being part of the spectacle, as well as her determination to gamely support Daniel in his moment of glory, with a delicious play of barely controlled facial expressions and body language. Grant, meanwhile, is every bit as funny registering Jerry’s happy enjoyment of Lucy’s predicament.

Ultimately Jerry wins Lucy’s heart back only by pratfalling into her voice recital (mistakenly believing it is a behind-closed-doors tryst with her voice teacher) and noisily collapsing his chair as she hits her final high note – in short, he makes a fool of himself and makes her laugh. Through another series of complications, her loses her again, but this time Lucy goes to her own comic extremes to win him back. She shows up unexpectedly at the home of Jerry’s heiress fiancee, Barbara Vance, and her stuffy highbrow parents, disguised as Jerry’s “sister,” Lola: a floozy in oversized hair bow and tight fitting dress who asks for a drink, announcing “I’ve had five or six already, but they’re starting to wear off and you know how that is!” (A great line. I’m actually laughing as I type it….) She caps off the night by performing Dixiebelle’s nightclub number to the quietly registered horror of the Vances – and the irrepressible amusement of her ex-husband.

It’s always a treat to re-experience these scenes and other bits of funny business that still make me laugh out loud after innumerable repeat viewings. Some of those laughs are not particularly sophisticated. Take for example, Jerry’s first post-divorce visit to Lucy’s apartment to see Mr. Smith. He plays the piano loudly with Mr. Smith barking along for accompaniment, stopping abruptly so Mr. Smith can “take it” – which he does barking in a perfectly rhythmic solo. I can’t tell you why that’s so funny, but it just is – even more so when Grant merrily cracks up himself.

Dunne and Grant, whose marvelous comic chemistry gives The Awful Truth its lovely, lunatic charm were a classic screen couple. They worked together again with Leo McCarey on My Favorite Wife, which actually recycled some gags from The Awful Truth, and with George Stevens on the oppressively weepy Penny Serenade. McCarey won a Oscar for his direction of the film, with both Dunne and Bellamy nominated for their work. Of course, the inexplicably missing nominee there is Cary Grant. The Academy may have had their heads up their collective behinds when overlooking him, but Hollywood caught on fast; Grant became one of the screen’s greatest comic leading men making the classics Holiday, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday in just the next four years alone.

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16 Responses

Pat, a wonderful summation of the film and a compelling examination of some of the things that make it so special. I have called this the “definitive screwball comedy.” I particularly liked the idea you presented that it’s only in their desperation to win the other back that Lucy and Jerry take the kind of chances that lead to their making fools of themselves (to our great amusement, if not the theirs). I think the film reaches its comic peak with Lucy’s hilarious impersonation of “Lola,” the kind of vulgarian who seems a million miles away from the ladylike Irene Dunne were used to. For sheer inventiveness to get across sexual innuendo in a seemingly innocuous way, the finale with the mechanical clock takes the prize. And watching this movie always makes me feel like I’m present at a birth, that of the cinematic persona known as Cary Grant, who seems to have sprung fully formed from this movie and never looked back.

Thanks, R. D ! I agree that the “Lola” sequence may be the funniest thing in the movie, thanks to Irene Dunne’s extraordinary comic gifts at playing against type.
I didn’t realize until doing some research for the post that this was Grant’s first real comedy; he’s such a natural, it’s hard to believe he ever did anything else.

Pat, you’ve really hit the nail on the head regarding each and every thing that makes this film so great. I’m at a loss as to why it’s not on my own list (it was 3rd runner up); I must have relegated it downward for some idiosyncratic, intellectual reason (e.g., too much like a series of sketches), but your vibrant coverage convinces me I was a fool to do so as the film is delightful.

I enjoyed reading this especially as I haven’t seen the film for years (and wasn’t, if you want my own awful truth, blown away with at the time although clips I’ve seen since have made me chuckle). This makes me watch it again.

However, the reason I’m commenting – instead of admiring in silence as a lurker – is your first line, which got me thinking: “A few years back, when memes were passed around the film blogosphere like a flu virus…”

I kind of miss those days. Whatever happened to memes (it’s like they themselves were part of meta-meme which ran its course and petered out)? Something definitely happened, between mid-2010 and mid-2011: I remember kicking off a barnstormer of a meme two and a half years ago and then, a few months later, having trouble getting people interested in perpetuating an ongoing one from elsewhere. Earlier this year, when I half-heartedly tried to suggest another one, comments let alone blog posts were hard to come upon. Granted there are plenty of possible reasons for this (the initial ideas were better, my audience changed in character, etc.) but still a larger phenomenon seems to be at play – with all the “Death of…”, “Is…Dead?” talk going on (with cinema being but the latest subject of this morbid line of inquiry) it’s worth asking… When and where did memes die? Was it a natural death, a contagion, was it murder? Who killed them, and why?

A few ideas: the good, big basic concepts were already taken; as blogging became less of a novelty, so did the eagerness to share & swap ideas among bloggers (although blogathons seemed to outlive memes); or maybe it was just the stupid name (“meme” always reminded me of the sound Beaker makes, in the Muppets).

Anyway, I propose that we give memes a second chance. Or, at least, “take it under advisement” as a wise judge once said.

Nice work Pat. Can tell you love this one. This would make my ballot if I had submitted a 60-100. I do well like their chemistry together and it’s a lovely and charming film. I particularly love the scene at the end when they’re in those rooms opposite each other and that door keeps opening. It’s very cute and funny. Love that.

Re-watching The Awful Truth is always a tremendous pleasure for me, not so much because I get invested in the suspense of whether the Warriners end up together (I take that for granted), but just for the fun of watching them tease each other and get under each other’s skin.

You framed the appeal there in a nutshell Pat, and what a passionate, towering review you have written on a screwball comedy classic, an urbane, improvisational breathless work that perfectly balances romance and comedy. It is telling that Leo McCarey won an Oscar in the year that THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA claimed the Best Picture prize, and the Academy rarely acknowledges comedy in the major categories. No less an authority than the great Jean Renoir felt that McCarey understood characters better than anyone in Hollywood. Ralph Bellamy again shines as the hapless foil, but what chemistry between Grant and Dunne as you rightfully assert throughout. My own favorite vignette is the hilarious courtroom sequence when the “couple”fight for the custody of their beloved fox terrier. This defines the word ‘pacing’ in a screen comedy. Again, fabulous piece that was an utter joy to read! I can’t explain why I left this off my ballot. I guess I “screwed” up! Ha!

Thanks, Sam – and my apologies for the confusion for the format in which I sent the article.
Yes, McCarey’s Oscar was well-deserved and especially notable for a film such as this. I still think the omission of Grant from the film’s nominations was inexcusable, and it’s especially telling that his only nominations were for “serious” roles.

Pat, really enjoyed this piece and I’ve been remembering all the great scenes from this movie all day at work, especially those involving the dog (Asta, as I can’t help thinking of him!) and the cat at the end. The courtroom scene is probably my favourite. I must admit that most of the McCarey films I’ve seen so far leave me fairly cold, though I may be in a minority of one on that, but I do like this one. I’ve read that Cary Grant tried to get out of making this movie and also tried to swap roles with Ralph Bellamy – the latter is an intriguing thought! Anyway, great piece.

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